In the next place, during the time of the formation of the provisional confederacy of the cotton States, not only was Congress in session, and not only did it neglect to do anything to strengthen the hands of the Executive, but if the President had, without the authority of law, issued a call for volunteers, it would not have been responded to. It is true that some Northern legislatures passed resolutions tendering men and money to the United States. But how could such offers have been accepted and acted upon by the Executive, without the authority of law? How could a regiment, or an army of regiments, have been marched by the President into Georgia or Mississippi, to prevent the adoption of a secession ordinance? What but a declaration of war, made by the only war-making power, would have protected officers and men from being in the condition of trespassers and brigands, from the moment they set foot on the soil of a Southern State on such an enterprise? War, war upon a State or a people, must have a legal basis, if those who wage it are to be entitled to the privileges and immunities of soldiers. On the other hand, to enforce the laws of the United States against obstructions put in the way of their execution by individuals or unlawful combinations, was not to make war. But for this purpose, President Buchanan could not obtain from Congress the necessary means. Moreover, the public mind of the North was at that time intent upon the measures by which it was hoped that all differences between the two sections of the Union might be composed, and a call for volunteers would have been regarded as fatal to any prospect of adjustment, and would therefore have been little heeded. It required all the excitement which followed the bombardment of Fort Sumter, all the monstrous uprising of the North produced by that event, to secure a response to President Lincoln’s irregular call for seventy-five thousand men, in April, 1861.
But it was in the power of President Buchanan to hold the border States back from the secession movement until his successor could take the reins of Government, and this duty he successfully performed. Notwithstanding the failure of Congress to second his efforts to preserve the Union unbroken by anything but the secession of South Carolina; notwithstanding the failure of the Peace Convention to propose anything that Congress would accept, Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, Kentucky, even Tennessee[Tennessee] and Missouri, had not seceded, or taken steps to secede, on the 4th of March, 1861. The same conservative sentiment which still animated the best portion of the people of those States, kept them from the vortex of secession. They did not yet regard the election of Mr. Lincoln by a purely sectional vote of the non-slaveholding States as a sufficient cause for breaking up the Union. They still looked to his administration for measures that would prevent a civil war; still looked to the Federal Government for a redress of all the grievances of which any of the States could complain. So that when Mr. Buchanan laid down and Mr. Lincoln took up the powers of the Executive, the problem which remained for the latter, and which Mr. Buchanan left for him in the best attitude that it could be made to assume, was how still to keep those border States from joining the Southern Confederacy, as they had been kept from it hitherto.
This was largely, almost exclusively, a matter for the Executive, unless, indeed, he should think it best to call the new Congress, then legally existing, together immediately, and insist on its doing what the preceding Congress had neglected. This course was not at once adopted, and consequently everything depended upon the dealing of the Executive with the Confederate commissioners, who were then in Washington, respecting the evacuation of Fort Sumter. Mr. Buchanan had in no way trammelled his successor by negotiations with those commissioners. He had, in fact, declined all intercourse with them; and it was entirely optional with Mr. Lincoln to do the same thing, as it was entirely open to him to determine whether he would or would not order the evacuation of that fort, and to shape his measures accordingly. Thus far, an attack upon Major Anderson’s position had been prevented by the efforts of Virginia, and by the prudent course pursued by Mr. Buchanan. It was to be expected that the Southern commissioners would be most persistent in their demands; that they would seek the aid of influential persons who might desire to see the peace of the country preserved, and who would be willing to hazard so much of a recognition of the new Confederacy as a de facto power, as would be involved in a compliance with its immediate demands respecting Sumter. But by no act, or word, or omission of the outgoing President, had his successor been placed under any obligation to yield to those demands, or even to consider them. That the military situation had become such that Anderson could not be maintained in his position without sending a considerable army to his relief, was not due to President Buchanan’s unwillingness to send him reinforcements, but it was a consequence of Anderson’s not asking for them until he was so surrounded with fortifications and powerful batteries that he could not be relieved without a force many times greater than all that the Government then had at its command.
Mr. Lincoln, therefore, assumed the Government without a single admission by his predecessor of the right of secession, or of any claim founded on it; without any obligation, other than the duty of preventing a civil war, to hold even an informal negotiation with the Confederate commissioners; with thirteen millions of people in the border States still in the Union, and not likely to leave it, unless blood should be shed. It may be that in one sense it was fortunate that the first gun was fired on and not from Fort Sumter. But into that question it is not needful for me to enter. My province is fulfilled, if I have correctly described the condition in which Mr. Buchanan left the Government to his successor.
Excepting on the short drive from the White House to the Capitol, in the same carriage, on the 4th day of March, according to the graceful custom of inaugurating a new President, and in the public ceremony of the day, there is no reason to suppose that Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Lincoln ever met. All that is known is that Mr. Lincoln’s demeanor, while in the carriage, produced upon Mr. Buchanan the impression that he had no fears for his personal safety or the safety of the capital. But it does not appear that at that or any other time, Mr. Lincoln sought to know what his predecessor could tell him. It is too much the habit of our public men to live and act and confer only with their party associates. Unless it be in the conflicts of public debate, they learn nothing of the views, purposes, motives, and very little of the acts, of their political opponents. If ever there was an occasion when this habit needed to be broken, it was when one of these men was putting off and the other was assuming the great duties of the Presidency. Mr. Buchanan could not seek a conference with his successor on the state of public affairs; his successor did not seek or apparently desire one. How much there was that Mr. Buchanan could have communicated to Mr. Lincoln, and how much it concerned the interest of the Republic that the latter should learn, must be apparent from what has been gone over in the preceding pages. Such a conference, if it had served no other good purpose, would have fixed Mr. Lincoln’s attention upon the extreme importance of so guiding the intercourse between his administration, or any member of it, and the Confederate commissioners, as to prevent all pretext for an assault upon Fort Sumter.
Mr. Buchanan was detained by his private affairs in Washington until the 9th day of March. On that day, he departed for Wheatland, accompanied by Miss Lane and the other members of his household.
TROOPS AT THE CAPITAL.
The anonymous diarist of the North American Review, writing on the 4th day of March, the day of Mr. Lincoln’s inauguration, records his great disgust at the presence of troops in Washington, and attributes it to “the mischievous influence of the Blairs.” It is to be hoped that the statement which I have made will be considered as sufficient proof of the source from which the first suggestion of this very prudent and proper precaution came. There was no single moment of time and no place in the Union, during the whole period of Mr. Buchanan’s Presidency, at which the presence of a military force was more necessary than it was at Washington on the day of Mr. Lincoln’s inauguration; for, notwithstanding the absence of any tangible evidence of a conspiracy to seize the city or to interrupt the proceedings, yet, as Judge Black forcibly remarked in his letter to the President, preparation could do no possible harm, in any event, and in the event which seemed most probable, it was the country’s only chance of salvation. If, then, at this most critical time and place, there could be assembled only 653 men of the rank and file of the army, a part of them being the sappers and miners drawn from West Point, what a commentary does this fact afford, upon the charge that President Buchanan neglected his duty, by not garrisoning the Southern forts in the month of October, 1860. At that time, the whole number of seaboard forts of the United States was 57; the proper complement for war garrisons of these forts would require 28,420 men; and their actual garrisons were 1,334 men, 1,308 of whom were at Governor’s Island, New York, Fort McHenry, Maryland, Fortress Monroe, Virginia, and Alcantraz[Alcantraz] Island, San Francisco. The regular army, when recruited to its maximum, was only 18,000 men; actually it was not much over 16,000. At no time could any part of it have been withdrawn from the remote frontiers; and of the 1,308 men distributed at the five points above named, very few could have been transferred to the nine Southern forts mentioned by General Scott in his “views” of October, 1860. The Military Committee of the House of Representatives, in their Report of February 18, 1861, said: “Unless it is the intention of Congress that the forts, arsenals, clock yards and other public property, shall be exposed to capture and spoliation by any lawless bands who may have the inclination to commit depredations upon it, the President must be armed with additional force for their protection.” Accordingly, they reported a bill authorizing the President to call out the militia, but it was never acted upon. (See Report, H. R. No. 85, 36th Cong., 2d Session, and Bill No. 1,003.)